More Eliminations At the National Heads-Up Poker Championship

(Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

Continuing coverage of the first episode of NBC's 2009 National Poker Heads-up Championship, the feature table had finished early with Daniel Negreanu defeating Chris Moneymaker to move on to the second round.  Elsewhere, we were treated to Mike "The Mouth" Matusow in his match against the Italian Harry Potter, Dario Minieri. 

With Minieri having the advantage in chips, he looked down to find K-Q off-suit, a respectable hand heads-up.  He made a small raise and Matusow, with pocket deuces, re-raised for three times Minieri's bet.  Minieri then came over the top, putting Matusow's tournament life at stake. 

Matusow thought for a moment, considering the possibility that he was at best in a coin toss situation if Minieri had two over-cards, at worse he was a four-to-one underdog if Minieri had an over-pair.

Not wanting to risk his stack with those odds, he correctly folded. 

As Matusow dodged elimination, Orel Hershiser pushed all in against 2006 Head's-up Champion Ted Forrest.  Hershiser's Q-5 was well behind Forrest's A-K and the board blanked, ending Hershiser's day early.  Not only did Forrest advance to round two, but he received a signed baseball for his efforts from the former Dodger.

Table seven had former WSOP madman Hevad Khan, in his new kinder, gentler incarnation, putting his pocket nines up against Scotty Nguyen's A-J.  But Khan quickly went from a slight favorite to a dog when the flop came J-6-10 giving Nguyen top pair.  The jack on the turn gave Nguyen trips and Khan was drawing to one of the two remaining nines. But the river was a king.  Nguyen was moving up while Khan moved on out.

At table two, David Pham had actor Don Cheadle all in and dominated with pocket tens versus A-3 suited.   But the flop quickly turned things around as a 3-3-K gave Cheadle trip threes and the lead.   Pham needed help, but all he got were tantalizing close nines on both the turn and river and Cheadle survived his all in.

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